[Tom Matthies]

I’m not sure if H-264 supports an alpha channel. At any rate, export your clips WITHOUT rendering them to preserve the alpha channel. Try Animation at millions+ just for an experiment and see how that works.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

I’m cutting HD all day long without any of the problems you describe and it’s on an older Quad G5 running FCP 5.1.4. the same as you.
Renders are fast when necessary without any excessive waiting time. I’m generally cutting DVCPro HD.
I’d guess that somewhere something isn’t set up correctly on your system.
Double check everything again, especially your playback settings to make sure all your ducks are in a row. It should be working better than what you describe.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Thanks Jeremy, that was the problem.
I checked the control panel and it was set to zoom 14×9 rather than Pillerbox 4×3.
I didn’t realize that this setting would still affect the up conversion process when the Kona board was under control of Final Cut. Now I know.
Thanks again,
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

I trick that I think I remember (FCP is not running right now) if all of your clips are in a single layer on the timeline is to simply mark in at the beginning of your sequence, select all of the clips (CMD-A) and drag them to the canvas window and drop them on the “Overwrite with Transition” area. It will build a new sequence and add your default transition between every clip on your timeline. Just set you default transition and gove it a go.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Thanks Bob.
Raylight is the product I was trying to remember.
Actually, when I refered to Streamclip I meant the Digital Rapids “Stream” product. (I use Streamclip just about everyday and the name was stuck in my head) The Digital Rapids device is a hardware encoding box that can take a file and transcode/encode it into numerous different formats all in one pass. We usually do an mpeg1, mpeg2 , WMV, and Quicktime version of the original file. I would like to be able to take the sequences that I edit in the DV50 codec and bring them directly into the Digital Rapids box for conversion. I like the device since I can get multiple formats out of it all in real time. Very quick and fast. Since it is based on a PC processor, I was looking for the codes to allow me to take the DV50 codec right into the Digital Rapids.
Much faster than software encoding but a pain when working with DV50 or DV100 formats.
Thanks again,
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

If you’d like to see your video while in the effects editor mode, simply click and hold on the tab you are adjusting (control, filter, motion, etc.) and “tear” it off of the other tabs to a clear part of your screen. Then just select the video tab to see that’s happening. Also. while adjusting things, just click on the timeline and you will see the updates on the timeline in real time while you adjust parameters in the viewer.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Place the timeline cursor in the gap between the clips and hit (Close Gap) and it will close the gap between two adjacent clips in your timeline. Pretty fast when you get a rhythm going.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

I’ve had good results exporting H-264 files to clients running Windows machines.I’ve exported sevel projects originally edited in DVCPro HD to H264 and they have been able to play them on their machines once the got current versions of Quicktime on them.
I’ve also exported files as PhotoJpeg A with good results. Smaller file sizes as well.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Actually, Paul has a great point. In the old days in Chicago, if I needed a graphic or a scene rotoscoped, I’d send it up one floor to the Harry suite where it would be fixed, dumped back to D-1 and then taken back into the edit session…usually a day or two later. These days, the editor (me!) is the One Man Band that has to retouch scenes, make graphics in Photoshop or After Effects, do the audio sweetening, compose titles and wear many more “hats” including being the engineer-in-charge. Add to that keeping up with all of the software upgrades that seem to change daily. Kind of like being the Captain on the bridge of an ocean liner. Call for Full Speed Ahead! -and then run down to the engine room and start shoveling that coal!
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

And to make it even worse, years ago I worked in a large post house in Chicago. We had four on-line editing rooms and we editors needed to be comfortable working in each one. Two edit rooms had CMX-3600 editors. One had an early CMX Omni. The forth room had an Ampex ACE rig. Each room had a different switcher. Edit one had a Grass 300, edit two had a Grass 200-2, edit three had an old Grass 1600 and edit four had an Ampex Century 330. Each room had access to four channels of ADO. We also had two channels of K-Scope. Each room had a Chyron SuperScribe. We also had a pair of Abekas A-66 disc recorders. Add to all this a camera lane with a Hot-Head pan/tilt head and also a motion control rig. We then got four very early model Avid Media Composers that we needed to learn.
Every editor needed to be proficient with using ALL of this on-line, everyday while sitting in a room with several people from the agency all firing “suggestions” to the editor to “help” him edit. Depending on just what was dragged into an edit session, it was not at all uncommon for the hourly rates to go WAY north of the $1000/hour mark.
We were all very good at operating all of this stuff. We had no options of consulting a manual while in a session. We simply HAD to know the ins and outs of the equipment we were operating. We had some VERY specific work flows for a given project. Me might do a cut in Edit One with a particular editor on Monday and then do revisions in Edit Four with a different editor later. We had to generate a very concise paper trail of everything done in a session so that that information could be transfered onto a different session and then pick it up and continue with no interruptions-EVER! The work flows I had to learn have been invaluable in later years. I see myself as being very organized in the area of project management because of this past experience.
At the risk of sounding like one of those “Old Guys” we HAD to learn how to trouble shoot any given situation and to find a suitable solution to ANY problem that came up.
There are vastly more resources available today when a problem arises. It’s much easier to find solutions in a very short time when necessary. Almost too easy. There are times when it seems (to me) that the ability to solve problems by actually THINKING is going by the wayside. I still love to look at a situation or at some effect that I saw on a show the night before and then actually FIGURE out how it was done! Not to just to post an entry on the COW asking what plug-in can I buy to do this?
Read the manual, ask your self question and push yourself into finding a solution. If you do this and get a basic idea of what’s going on under the hood of the software…most of your problems will “magically” disappear. It takes time and hard work but, Hey!, we do this for a living. You wouldn’t want to go to the hospital and have the doctor pull out the manual for some piece of equipment while you’re in surgery. I wouldn’t.
OK, getting off of my soapbox and getting back to work now…
Tom